The Price of Freedom
by Cornuthaum
Summary: Einar Elsner always believed in doing his duty, for the God-Emperor and the Imperium at large.


Disclaimer: I own nothing. If I did, I would have the money to buy all the bacon I wanted. But I don't. So, no bacon.

1.) When the legions of Chaos attack his home planet, Einar Elsner does not scream, nor does he panic. He, an untrained civilian, takes a lasrifle from a gibbering fear-mad Imperial Guardsman and falls into the firing line, intent on defending his home to the last breath.

2.) A few hours later, as one of a handful of survivors bereft of commanding officers, young Einar is the one who takes charge of their group and through his stubborn refusal to let any man remain catatonic from fear and terror shakes several Guardsmen out of their stupor. Nobody thinks to question the fact that a lad of barely twenty years leads over fifty experienced veterans.

3.) When all hope seems lost, when the foul worshippers of the Ruinous Powers are about to kill the last half-dozen survivors, it is Einar who motivates them to go out with pride, fulfilling their oaths to the beloved God-Emperor instead of ending it with a lasround to the head. Moments later, these haggard few are privy to a magnificent spectacle as Space Marine drop-pods in the color of gleaming, polished ceramite drop from the heavens.

4.) The Grey Knights are even more surprised than young Einar and his group of guardsmen to find survivors... but are even more wary of demonic infilitration. Einar will forever remember the agony of the excruciator burrowing in his flesh at the hands of the Inquisitorial interrogator. But that man, Einar sobs in broken tones, speaking to himself as he is tied to the pain-chair, does the Emperor's work as surely as Einar did on the planet.

5.) Einar survives the interrogation, harmed in flesh, but not in spirit. The demonic flesh-beast erupting from one of his fellow survivors as the man is being tied to the pain-chair kills many people... but again, Einar does the Emperor's work. Bleeding and in pain, he drives the excruciator through the thing's head, only collapsing after he is sure the thing is dead.

6.) When he wake, he is confronted with the most terrifying man he has ever seen - including the worshippers of Chaos that ravaged his home. That man would like him to become one of his acolytes, to be trained in the arts of the same interrogation Einar himself endured in the bowels of this ship. The Inquisition, the man says, always needs people like him, full of conviction and the will to do what the Emperor needs done. Einar agrees.

7.) Over the next seven years, Einar learns it all. How to hurt people in a way that leaves them unable to even think of the concept of lying, hurting them in this way without anyone noticing, indeed, hurting people in a great many ways. But Einar does not enjoy their strangled screams, he does not enjoy cutting their flesh open to lay bare the lies in their black hearts. Unlike his fellow interrogators, he does it because it is a task that must be done, and must be done well. Einar never questions why the Inquisitor lavishes preferential treatment upon his fellow Interrogators - that man does as he wants, for reasons none are privy to - and continues to do the beloved Emperor's work.

8.) After their work in cracking open the Tullus Conspiracy, Einar notices a gradual shift in his orders. No longer is he to focus on where the cultists and conspirators against the Imperium are hiding, no, he is to find out why they are doing it, how they did it and where they hid their blasphemous materials. Einar hopes that this serves to locate and destroy these things, but even that hope is sorely tested the first time he has to lay his blades on one of the Inquisitor's savants, gibbering mad from the very texts they retrieved. But if the Inquisitor - the very man whose grand Daemonhammer crushed the head right off the Chaos Lord Mragg-Q'lzor - wants these texts to be read by someone he has a good reason to sacrifice his own servants for this purpose.

9.) After the catastrophic events of the Praaner IV campaign, where a cunning heretic psyker leads the Inquisitor and his team into a deadly trap, Einar remains as the only member of the Inquisitor's retinue who joined with the man before Old Scarface (and Einar makes sure to never even think that name in the presence of his psychically gifted master) took to studying the books of Chaos instead of burning them outright. Einar does not like the new conscripts - after all, they weren't there when the Inquisitor slew the Warp-Witch G'kzonra Vilemind, were they?

10.) Einar is not a fool, and it is because of this that he survives the ever-inreasing attempts on his life. He never manages to find out who it is that tries to kill him, but whoever it is has to be on the Inquisitor's ship. With the skills accumulated in fifteen years of service, Einar begins to hunt the traitor in their midst - never leaving a mark on the people he questions ... for words, Einar knows, can cut as deeply as blades and fire can.

11.) For the last time in his life, Einar girds himself for battle. Now he knows where the leader of the traitors who tried to kill him is. Worse, Einar knows who it is. He weeps freely as he kneels before the grand statue of the Emperor in the ship's chapel, praying for forgiveness for he has been unwittingly complicit in the traitor's schemes. He oils his bolt-pistols - gifts from a Guard colonel whose men survived the Bloodgrind Valley campaign because of the information Einar retrieved - and makes sure his armor - a gift from the Inquisitor after Einar threw himself into harm's way to protect him on Parakas XVI - fits him well on this last duty.

12.) As the oldest acolyte aboard, Einar has the privilege to ask the Inquisitor for a private meeting - and for the first time in his career, he does so. He walks up to his mentor, embraces him in a hug - much to the confusion of the old man - and then shoots him with his other hand, straight into the heart. Einar tries to convince himself that the man's last words weren't "Thank you". But Einar has very, very good ears from years of listening to heretics repenting.

13.) One last time, Einar thinks, one last time he has to endure this: The glow of warpfire in a man's eyes as the daemonic thing that burrowed itself into the Inquisitor's spirit years ago is almost unbearable to look at - all these years, all the men and women who died under his blades so their souls could stand before the emperor, purified through pain in life - but still, Einar looks at it. It's sibilant voice violates his mind, promises of power, of glory, promises of wealth, yes, even of an Inquisitorial rosette in Einar's hands, if only he lets that flesh-thing go and never speaks a word to anyone about what happened to Old Scarface.

14.) Einar's answer is simple: gunfire echoes through the Inquisitor's chambers. Even as the daemon-thing tears him apart, slowly tormenting him as it dissolves his legs, promising to work its way up to his heart very, very slowly, Einar smiles. He has already won: the ship's reactor is overloading even as he dies, and soon, Einar thinks, he will stand before the beloved God-Emperor.

15.) Einar dies a free, uncorrupted man and this, in this grim age of unrelenting darkness, is more than most men can claim.


End file.
